May 2025 – I’m going to finally have a garden again!

May 2025, after two years without I’m finally getting my vegetable garden back and its going to be better than ever! That’s been a rule in my life for a long long time, if I lose something I loved (that’s actually replaceable) then I can at least replace it with something that’s a little bit better. I chose to have my old garden taken out when they took out the barn two years ago. It would have kept going for a few years longer but I built it out of barn wood and it was totally (slowly) rotting away. And we decided to have the random cement slab it was sitting on taken out as well so it just made sense.

I was going to build a garden last year but after the barn removal and the new septic system (that we HAD to put in) I was left in total sticker shock. I just couldn’t spend another penny for a good long while!

Besides that I lost my soul horse in late March last year and, frankly, I was just pretty much done with everything for a good minute.

But the old fact remains that if I don’t garden I always regret it.

So, I went to Menards online first to see just how much cost I was looking at.

I know a lot of people would have just tilled up a part of their yard and planted something. But we have serious deer and bunnies and I loved my three foot tall raised bed garden that I built years ago.

May 2025 my new garden isn’t going to be entirely indestructible but it will be darned close. And, yes, that comes with a pretty hefty price tag of around $3,000 but I’ll probably never have to worry about it again.

I ended up ordering two 10×10 open ended dog kennels that came with two gates. They’re in a nice (fancy to me) black steel that will hold up.

Putting them back to back gave me a 5 foot tall, 10×20 foot area to get started in.

I covered the entire space with heavy duty plastic that came in a 8×100 foot roll and we just used all of it, layering and layering, because I don’t want to have to mow in my garden!

Figuring out how to build my raised beds was the next hurdle, I found 3 foot tall black fencing to match but I needed something to keep the dirt in. So I ordered styrofoam insulation boards /sheets and black weed fabric to cover them up.

It was just a case of getting her built then and OMG did we have the strangest few days of weather when I planned it!

It was so extreme I couldn’t even be mad – I just had to laugh. May 2025 the four days I was going to take off of work to build my garden were all over 90 degrees with 30-40 mph wind gusts the ENTIRE time.

A few days later we had a high of 44 degrees…

It made no sense!

(One of those days I went out to grill some hot dogs for us and the grill was already up to 130 degrees before I turned it on lol.)

So, I got the main fence (with the plastic under it) built on the day before the heat and wind hit us and then I just waited because I was NOT going to haul dirt on any one of those insane days.

With that wind I would have ended up wearing my garden instead of planting it!

Besides the garden I went ahead and finally splurged on the “lawn” that I’ve always wanted. That meant a lot more dirt and more work, but I planted ever blooming native perennials all around my vegetable garden.

I do plan on putting up a simple rail fence to define my “meadow” eventually but Lodi knows my plans and won’t mow it. May 2025 I love I’m doing all of this in the footprint of our old barn!

Turning that sad memory of losing the barn into this is about as good as it could get for me.

I was already pretty thrilled to move my peonies up here to the front of my new garden but it dawned on me I can do a lot more than that.

The L shaped flower bed around our house is falling a part.

I was making plans on how to save it but the only reason to save it is literally all the perennial flowers I have in it. No reason they can’t just come up here too!

That won’t happen until this fall though as its already feeling too late in the year to move them without potentially killing them. So, by then, I may just plan to build flower beds for them too.

Of course the beds will not be near so tall nor so costly but the idea of surrounding my veggie garden with flower beds and all of my grandma’s perennial flowers really makes my heart happy.

And that includes the hydrangea bush too!

With my total lack of any South facing space and heavily shaded lot every single one of those flowers (and the bush) have been making it but in no way flourishing as they should.

I have never had a good place for them until now.

May 2025 I am so excited!

Unfortunately that was not the end of our crazy weather and I still don’t have a complete garden yet to show you guys!

It snowed on May 25th and endless days of rain before that (including two nights of below freezing temps) really stopped all of us in our tracks. But next post (fingers crossed) I will finally have the whole garden done and ready to show you guys!